Supports and support assemblies have long been used to elevate racks and other objects off the ground, so as to provide space between a lowermost functional part of the rack, for example. Support assemblies, including wheels and casters, provide the additional benefit of enhanced mobility of a rack to which the wheeled support assemblies are attached.
Conventional support assemblies and holding racks are expensive to fabricate, costly to ship, unhygienic, and often have structural features which reduce the amount of available space for holding stored materials thereon.
For example, a prior art knock-down dolly with disassembly facilitating means is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,774,609 to Winger. The Winger dolly is assembled by use of parts having dove tail joints, other take-apart structural parts, and casters located directly in the corners of the rectangular Winger frame. Given the location of the casters directly at the intersection of the Winger frame members making up the sides of the traditional rectangular dolly, usable space is lost between the front and rear corner posts which extend above the Winger casters. This lost space will be readily recognized when one considers that a tray or bread pan, for example, can only be inserted between the inner faces of the corner posts. Furthermore, the lost space restricts the amount of surface area available for supporting the edge of a tray that would otherwise have been provided by the top face of the Winger end pieces forming part of the traditional rectangular frame, as the edges of a tray must be spaced inwardly therefrom. Furthermore, it is difficult and expensive, if not completely impractical, to bolt a detachable caster assembly directly in the corner of a frame. In addition, dove tail joints, such as used by Winger, are expensive to fabricate and difficult to assemble readily.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,487,495 to Schultz, Jr., discloses a steel bracket 14 which is a metal stamping configured for receiving the pintle or shaft member of a caster assembly, and to be received, in turn, in a rectangular leg or housing of a piece of furniture. Although the Schultz caster assembly is no doubt inexpensive to manufacture, its construction is not suited for heavy duty use.